Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
1978, Vol. 36, No. 6, 635-642
The Mindlessness of Ostensibly Thoughtful Action:
The Role of "Placebic" Information in
Interpersonal Interaction
Ellen Langer
Harvard University
Arthur Blank and Benzion Chanowitz
The Graduate Center
City University of New York
Three field experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that complex
social behavior that appears to be enacted mindfully instead may be performed
without conscious attention to relevant semantics. Subjects in compliance paradigms received communications that either were or were not semantically sensible, were or were not structurally consistent with their previous experience, and
did or did not request an effortful response. It was hypothesized that unless the
communication occasioned an effortful response or was structurally (rather than
semantically) novel, responding that suggests ignorance of relevant information
would occur. The predictions were confirmed for both oral and written communications. Social psychological theories that rely on humans actively processing
incoming information are questioned in light of these results.
Consider the image of man or woman as a
creature who, for the most part, attends to
the world about him or her and behaves on
the basis of reasonable inference drawn from
such attention. The view is flattering, perhaps,
but is it an accurate accounting of covert
human behavior?
Social psychology is replete with theories
that take for granted the "fact" that people
think. Consistency theories (cf. Abelson et al.,
1968), social comparison theory (Festinger,
1954; Schachter, 1959), and attribution
theory (Heicler, 1958; Jones et al., 1972;
Kelley, 1967), for example, as well as generally accepted explanations for phenomena
like bystander (non)intervention (Darley &
Latane, 1968), all start out with the underlying assumption that people attend to their
The authors are grateful to Robert Abelson for his
comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript and
to Cynthia Weinman for conducting Experiment 1.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Ellen
Langer, Department of Psychology and Social Relations, 1318 William James Hall, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138.
world and derive behavioral strategies based
on current incoming information. The question raised here is not whether these formulations are correct, nor is it whether people are
capable of thoughtful action. Instead, we
question how often people outside of the laboratory are actually mindful of the variables
that are relevant for the subject and for the
experimenter in the laboratory, and by implication, then, how adequate our theories of
social psychology really are.
This article questions whether, in fact, behavior is actually accomplished much of the
time without paying attention to the substantive details of the "informative" environment.
This idea is obviously not new. Discussions of
mind/body dualism by philosophers and the
consequences that different versions of this
relation have on its status as an isomorphic,
deterministic, or necessary relationship between the two are part of psychology's heritage. However, the extent of the implications
of this idea has not been fully appreciated nor
researched. How much behavior can go on
without full awareness? Clearly, simple motor
acts may be overlearned and performed auto-
Copyright 1978 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-3514/78/3606-0635$00.7S
635
636
E. LANGER, A. BLANK, AND B. CHANOWITZ
matically, but what about complex social interactions?
The class of behavior of greatest interest
here is not that which is commonly understood to be automatic, such as walking or
typewriting, but rather that which is commonly assumed to be mindful but may be, in
fact, rather automatic. We shall refer to it
here as mindless behavior—mindless in the
sense that attention is not paid precisely to
those substantive elements that are relevant
for the successful resolution of the situation.
It has all the external earmarks of mindful
action, but new information actually is not
being processed. Instead, prior scripts, written
when similar information really was once new,
are stcreotypically reenacted. Berne (1964)
discussed the idea of scripts in a popularized
way, and Abelson (1976) rigorously elaborated the concept in generating a computer
simulation of belief systems. To Abelson,
a script is a "highly stylized sequence of
typical events in a well-understood situation,
. . . a coherent sequence of events expected
by the individual, involving him either as a
participant or as an observer." (p. 33) (See
Author's note, p. 642.)
The notion of a script was used -to describe
a study by Langer and Abelson (1972),
where it was argued that asking a favor had
certain script dimensions and that the success
of getting compliance depended on the specific
syntax of the request rather than on the
specific content of the statement, fn that
study, the words making up the request were
held constant, while the order of the words
spoken was varied. The opening words determined which script was followed, and compliance varied accordingly. Similar to the notion
of script is Goffman's (1974) concept of
frames, Harre and Secord's (1973) idea of
episode, Thorngate's (1976) idea of caricature, Miller, Galanter, and Pribram's (1960)
notion of plans, and Neisser's (1967) concept
of preattentive processing. Each of these formulations speaks 1,0 the individual's ability
to abide by the particulars of the situation
without mindful reference to those particulars.
However, while Abelson has come closest
to delineating the structure of scripts, no one
has yet experimentally determined the minimum requirements necessary to invoke a par-
ticular script, nor has scripted behavior really
been demonstrated to be mindless. While the
former issue is not addressed in the present
article, the latter is the article's main concern,
and we may shed some light on the requirements for script learning and enactment once
the mindlcssness of ostensibly thoughtful
actions has been demonstrated. This suggests
that the essence of a script may not lie in
recurring semantics but rather in more general
paralinguistic features of the message. When
we speak of people organizing incoming information, it is as important to take into
account what they systematically ignore as it
is to take into account what they systematically process. And when we speak of people
ignoring information, it is important to distinguish between information that is ignored
because it is irrelevant and information that
is ignored because it is already known. It is
known because it has been seen many times
in the past, and aspects of its structure that
regularly appear indicate that this time is just
like the last. Thus, what is meant by mindlessness here is this specific ignorance of
relevant substance.
This article reports three field experiments
undertaken to test the mindlessness of ostensibly thoughtful action in the domains of
spoken and written communication. It was
hypothesized that when habit is inadequate,
thoughtful behavior will result and that this
will be the case when cither of two conditions
is met: (a) when the message transmitted is
structurally (rather than scmantically) novel
or (b) when the interaction requires an effortful response.
Experiment 1
Method
The first experiment was conducted in the context
of a compliance paradigm, where people about to
use a copying machine were asked to let another person use it first. The study utilized a 3 X 2 factorial
design in which the variables of interest were the
type of information presented (request; request plus
"placcbic" information; request plus real information) and the amount of effort compliance entailed
(small or large).
Subjects. The subjects were 120 adults (68 males
and 52 females) who used the copying machine at
the Graduate Center of the City University of New
MINDLESSNESS OF OSTENSIBLY THOUGHTFUL ACTION
York. Each person who approached the machine on
the days of the experiment was used as a subject
unless there was a line at the machine when the
experimenter arrived or a person came to use the
machine immediately after a subject had been approached. (There was a minimum wait of S minutes
between subjects). Half of the experimental sessions
were conducted by a female who was blind to the
experimental hypotheses, and the remaining sessions
were run by a male experimenter who knew the
hypotheses.
Procedure. Subjects were randomly assigned into
one of the groups described below. The experimenter
was seated at a table in the library that permitted a
view of the copier. When a subject approached the
copier and placed the material to be copied on the
machine, the subject was approached by the experimenter just before he or she deposited the money
necessary to begin copying. The subject was then
asked to let the experimenter use the machine first
to copy either 5 or 20 pages. (The number of pages
the experimenter had, in combination with the number of pages the subject had, determined whether the
request was small or large. If the subject had more
pages to copy than the experimenter, the favor was
considered small, and if the subject had fewer pages
to copy, the favor was taken to be large). The experimenter's request to use the machine was made
in one of the following ways:
1. Request only. "Excuse me, I have S (20) pages.
May I use the xerox machine?"
2. Placebic information. "Excuse me, I have 5 (20)
pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I have
to make copies?"
3. Real information. "Excuse me, I have S (20)
pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I'm in a
rush?"
Once the request was made and either complied or
not complied with, the experimenter returned to the
table and counted the number of copies the subject
made. The dependent measure was whether subjects
complied with the experimenter's request.
If subjects were processing the information
communicated by the experimenter, then the
rate of compliance should be equivalent for
Groups 1 and 2, since the amount of information conveyed is the same for both of
these groups, but it might be different for
Group 3, since this group received additional
information. If, however, subjects are responding to the situation on the basis of a
prior script that reads something like "Favor
X + Reason Y —> Comply," then the rate of
compliance should be the same for Groups 2
and 3 (placebic and real information) and
greater than for Group 1 (request only). It
was predicted that the latter result would obtain. Thus, while the information given to
Group 2 was redundant in an information
637
Table 1
Proportion of Subjects Who Agreed to Let the
Experimenter Use the Copying Machine
Reason
No
Favor
info.
Small
n
.60
IS
Big
.24
25
n
Placebic
info.
Sufficient
info.
.93
15
.24
25
.94
16
.42
24
theory sense (Shannon & Weaver, 1949), it
was predicted to be necessary, and thus not
redundant, in a script sense.
As stated earlier, it was assumed that people would not behave in this pseudothinking
way when responding was potentially effortful. Then, there is sufficient motivation for
attention to shift from simple physical characteristics of the message to -the semantic
factors, resulting in processing of current information. Thus, it was predicted that as the
favor became more demanding, the placebicinformation group would behave more like
the request-only group and differently (yielding a lower rate of compliance) from the
real-information group.
Results and Discussion
The proportion of subjects who complied in
each group was computed, and a 3 X 2 X 2
(Request X Effort X Experimenter) analysis
of variance was performed using 0 and 1 as
scores (complied vs. did not comply). This
analysis yielded three main effects: communication, F(2, 108) = 3.02, p< .05; effort,
F(l, 108) = 43.40, p<.001; and experimenter, F(l, 108) = 6.67, p < .01. The proportions of subjects who complied with the
different requests are presented in Table 1.
Not surprisingly, the female experimenter had
a higher rate of compliance than the male
experimenter, but since there were no interactions between this variable and the others',
the data are combined in the table for ease of
reading. A contrast analysis using planned,
orthogonal comparisons was performed. The
contrast analyses that were performed set the
small effort/placebic-information group and
the small effort/sufficient-information group
638
E. LANGER, A. BLANK, AND B. CHANOWITZ
as equal to each other but distinct from the
small effort/no-information group; the large
effort/sufficient-information group was contrasted with the large efforl/placebic-information group and the large effort/no-information group. These contrasts reflect the hypothesis that when there was small effort
involved, the placebic-information group
would be similar to the sufficient-information
group but that when effort was large, the
placebic-information group would be similar
to the no-information condition. It was found
that for the small-effort contrast, the means
of the placebic- and sufficient-information
conditions were virtually identical and significantly different from the no-information condition, F(l, 114) =6.35, p < .05. For the
contrast comparing the more effortful favor,
the no-information and placebic-information
groups were identical and tended to be different from the sufficient-information group,
^(1, 114) = 2.83, .10 <p> .05.
Also, and not surprisingly, for requests of
the same type, small requests result in greater
compliance than larger requests.
The results support the hypothesis that an
interaction that appears to be mindful, between two people who are strangers to each
other and thus have no history that would
enable precise prediction of each other's behavior, and in which there are no formal roles
to fall back on to replace that history, can,
nevertheless, proceed rather automatically.
1 f a reason was presented to the subject, he or
she was more likely to comply than if no
reason was presented, even if the reason conveyed no information. Once compliance with
the request required a modicum of effort on
the subject's part, thoughtful responding
seemed to take the place of mindlessness, and
the reason now seemed to matter. Under these
circumstances, subjects were more likely to
comply with the request based on the adequacy of the reason presented.
Experiment 2
The next two experiments attempted to extend the results of Experiment 1 to the domain of written communications, since it is
our contention that pseudothinking behavior
is more the rule than the exception for prac-
tically all verbal behavior as well as nonverbal
behavior. The more one participates in any
activity, the more likely it is that scriptlike
qualities will emerge. Through repeated exposure to a situation and its variations, the
individual learns to ignore and remain ignorant of the peculiar semantics of the situation.
Rather, one pays attention to the scripted cue
points that invite participation by {he individual in regular ways.
In Experiments 2 and 3, we sought to engage subjects in an activity that would have
for them scripted qualities. Specifically, the
activity we chose involved receiving and responding to letters and memoranda that were
sent through either the U.S. Mail or interoffice mail, depending on the study. As in
Experiment 1, it was assumed that ostensibly
thoughtful action would proceed mindlessly as
long as the structure of the activity involved
remained consistent with its scripted character.
Following this assumption, we expected that
individuals who received mail that asked for
a response would return what was requested
if the communication was structurally phrased
so as to follow the commonly expected script
for mail. The return of the response would
serve as evidence of the fact that the person
had read the material and engaged in the
activity of correspondence through the mail.
If the communications to the subject were
semantically senseless and yet fulfilled the
script requirements for written communication, we could safely assume that the return
of the mail signified that we had engaged the
subject in mindless behavior—that he or she
had not "thought about" the material but had
returned it merely because it satisfied the
structural requisites for a habitual behavior.
To make the case more strongly, we sent to
the subjects communications that were equally'
senseless semantically but which varied in
their adherence to the structural requirements
of communications. If the responses varied
directly with the adherence to structural consistency expected in communications, we could
infer that the behavior that led to the subjects' returns was of a scripted character—
entirely habitual, despite the fact that, on the
face of it, if we observed the behavior we
MINDLESSNESS OF OSTENSIBLY THOUGHTFUL ACTION
would assume it was thoughtfully processed
in character.
In Experiment 2, subjects were mailed a
meaningless, five-item questionnaire. The
cover letter either demanded or requested the
return of the questionnaire and was either
signed (e.g., "Thank you for your help,
George L. Lewis") or unsigned. It was assumed that signed requests and unsigned
demands were more congruent with the structure of most written communications than unsigned requests and signed demands and
therefore would be more conducive to sustaining mindless behavior. The cover letter had
no letterhead and could not possibly, with
thought, be construed as representing a legitimate authority. Therefore,
"thoughtful"
processing of the cover letter would not uncover any rational reasons for returning the
questionnaire.
In order to test whether habitual responding was taking place, rather than merely
polite compliance, two groups of subjects
were selected who were assumed to vary in
their experience with written communications.
It was predicted that the more experienced
subjects (who were also the more educated
subjects) would be more likely to return the
questionnaire when the structure of the request/demand was consistent with their past
than the less experienced subjects, for whom
congruency was not expected to matter.
Method
Subjects. Forty subjects were selected randomly
from the Manhattan telephone directory and constituted the random-status group. Another 40 subjects
were chosen randomly from the "Physicians" section
of the Manhattan Yellow Pages and constituted the
high-status group.
Procedure. Each subject received a questionnaire
in the U.S. Mail consisting of the five following questions:
1. The subway or bus is the more enjoyable mode
of public transportation ?
2. Movies or plays are the more enjoyable form of
public entertainment ?
,3. Libraries or parks are the more enjoyable form
of free public entertainment?
4. Forests or playgrounds are the more enjoyable
public places to spend time ?
5. Cash or credit cards is the more efficient form of
public exchange of goods?
All subjects received the questionnaire at their residence. Along with the questionnaire, the subjects
639
Table 2
Proportion of Subjects Who Returned the
Questionnaire
Status
Condition
High
Congruent
n
Iricongrueiif
n
.55
20
.20
20
.32
19
.37
19
received a stamped envelope addressed to a post
office box, as well as a cover sheet that varied in one
of the following four ways:
1. Congruent conditions, (a) Request/personal—"I
would appreciate it if you would fill out the attached
questionnaire and return it in the enclosed envelope
to me by September 10. Thank you for your help,
George L. Lewis," (h) Demand/impersonal—"The
attached questionnaire is to be filled out and returned by September 10."
2. Incongnient conditions, (a) Request/impersonal
—"I would appreciate it if you would fill out the
attached questionnaire and return it in the enclosed
envelope to me by September 10." (b) Demand/personal—"The attached questionnaire is to be filled out
and returned in the enclosed envelope by September
10. Thank you for your help, George L. Lewis."
Thus, the study was a 2 (random vs. high status)
X 2 (request vs. demand) X 2 (personal vs. impersonal) factorial design. Again, it was predicted that
high-status subjects who received congruent communications would be more likely to comply than
the other groups.
Results and Discussion
Table 2 presents the proportion of subjects
who returned the questionnaire, by congruence and status.1 An analysis of variance was
performed using 0 and 1 scores. Although
there were no main effects, a contrast that set
the high-status congruent group as different
from the remaining groups, which in turn were
equal to each other, was significant at p <
.OS, F(l, 74) = 5.91. The congruent and incongruent cells of Table 2 are broken down
for examination in Table 3. The analyses of
variance of these data were not significant.
However, there was a trend for a three-way
interaction, F(l, 70) - 3.48, p < .08, which
indicates again that the congruency effect
1
Two of the original letters were returned with
the notice that the addressee no longer lived at the
address. Hence, there were 78 subjects in the study.
E. LANGER, A. BLANK, AND B, CHANOWITZ
640
Table 3
Proportion of Subjects Who Returned the
Questionnaire
CoudiUon
High status
Random status
Vet1msonal personal
Per1msonal personal
Demand
n
.33
9
.40
10
.44
9
.20
10
Request
n
.70
10
.30
10
.20
10
.30
10
tends to be modified by status. It appears that
our notion of what is congruent was correct
only for people like ourselves, who have had
an abundance of certain kinds of written communications and not others. That is, instead of
there being a general script for written communications, there are probably several scripts
peculiar to individuals in their relation to social institutions. In fact, on second thought,
it seems that communiques sent from employer to employee, or from manager to office
worker (the latter two probably comprised
much of the random-status group), would
more than likely be either of the demand/
personal or request/impersonal sort, since
these forms allow the sender to maintain his
or her status while still observing a modicum
of civility.
Experiment 3 was undertaken to test
again, more rigorously, the mindlessness of
ostensibly thoughtful actions in regard to
written communications. However, for this
study, the script was first determined empirically and then tested.
Experiment 3
Method
Eighty-three memoranda were collected from the
wastepaper baskets of 20 secretaries of various departments at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Sixty-eight percent of these
had the request/impersonal form described earlier.
While varying in content, each of these communications requested rather than demanded that the secretary do something (e.g., "Please make 20 copies of
this"), and none were signed at the bottom of the
request. Thus, for this group of people, the communication most congruent with their experience
would be request/impersonal. Even though in these
instances the receiver in all likelihood knew who the
sender was, this kind of communication is still con-
sidered impersonal, since it stands in contrast to
those communications where the sender also is known
but where the memo is signed just the same. The
distinction between signed and unsigned memos is
being drawn, in spile of the fact that in both cases
the sender is known, because small structural differences of this kind arc predicted to either cue in a
script or not, depending upon one's past experience.
The remaining 32% of the memos were virtually
equally distributed among the other categories. With
this in mind, 40 secretaries at the Graduate Center
were sent, through interoffice mail, a senseless memorandum that was either congruent with their experience or incongruent. In order to allow for comparisons with Experiment 2, the same four forms of
written communication that were used previously
were randomly sent to these subjects. However, now
there were one congruent form (request/impersonal)
and three incongruent forms (request/personal, demand/personal, domand/impcrsonal) :
Request. "1 would appreciate it if you would return this paper immediately to Room 238 through
interoffice mail."
Demand. "This paper is to be returned immediately
to Room 238 through interoffice mail."
Half of each of these messages were signed ("Sincerely, John Lewis"), and half were unsigned and
merely had a number (R374-021-A) at the bottom of
the message.
Nothing more was written on the memo. Subjects
were simply asked to return a piece of paper that
asked them only to return that paper to Room 238.
The designated room did not exist in the building.
The mailroom attendants put the returned letters
aside for us.
Thus, the study utilized a 2 (request vs. demand)
X 2 (personal vs. impersonal) factorial design, with
10 subjects in each cell.
Results and Discussion
Table 4 presents the proportion of subjects
who returned the letters as a function of the
various conditions. To test the hypothesis that
mindless behavior will result when script requirements arc met, the proportions of subjects who returned the memo in the congruent
condition (.90) and the incongruent conditions (.60) were compared. Using 0 and 1
scores, the analysis showed them to be significantly different from each other, i(38) —
1.78, p < .05. It should be noted that what
we are calling congruent was determined by
sampling a fraction of the secretaries' past
experience with written
communications.
Sixty-eight percent of the memos fell into the
request/impersonal condition. Quite possibly,
if we had mapped out first what was congruent for each secretary and then sent the appropriately structured-for-congruence memo
MINDLESSNESS OF OSTENSIBLY THOUGHTFUL ACTION
to her or him, the compliance might have
reached 100%.
Experiments 2 and 3 provide support for
the mindlessness hypothesis in regard to written communications. It would seem that
thoughtful processing of the information communicated to these subjects would have resulted in a nonresponse from them. Nevertheless, when the script was congruent with subjects' experience, 55% of the physicians and
90c/(, of the secretaries complied with 'the
meaningless communication.
Conchisions
These studies taken together support the
contention that when the structure of a
communication, be it oral or written, semantically sound or senseless, is congruent with
one's past experience, it may occasion behavior mindless of relevant details. Clearly,
some information from the situation must be
processed in order for a script to be cued.
However, what is being suggested here is that
only a minimal amount of structural information may be attended to and that this information may not be the most useful part of
the information available. While the authors
do in fact believe that people very often
negotiate their interpersonal environments
mindlessly, studies like these may simply
demonstrate that subjects are not thinking
about what one thinks -they are thinking about
(i.e., what is relevant), rather than demonstrating that their minds are relatively blank.
If we knew all of the things subjects could be
thinking about, we could use the present experimental paradigm to at least test this
alternative. However, since there are an infinite number of thoughts subjects may be
thinking, this strong hypothesis will have to
remain at the level of conjecture until other
experimental methods are devised. The difficulty of inventing such a methodology
should not preclude efforts in that direction,
since if mindlessness is the rule rather than
the exception, man}' of the findings in social
psychology would have to be reformulated
(see Langer, 1978, for a more detailed discussion of this point).
While these studies ma}' be open to alternative interpretations, they suggest that per-
641
Table 4
Proportion of Subjects Who Returned the Memo
Memo type
Condition
Personal
Impersonal
Demand
.60
.50
Request
.70
.90
Note, n = 10/cell.
haps there has been misdirected emphasis on
people as rational information processors. Instead of viewing people as either rational or
irrational, it would seem wise to at least consider the possibility that their behavior may
be arational and yet in some way systematic.
These studies then raise questions about the
inferential processes traditionally assumed by
cognitive social psychology. This has been
alluded to by Bern (1972) and more recently
by Dweck and Gilliard (197S). It may not be
that a person weighs information and then
proceeds but that he or she more often just
proceeds on the basis of structural cues that
occasion further regular participation in the
interaction. To the extent that this script
domination is typical of daily interaction, corrections must be made in our accounts of how
individuals behave.
When does this mindless activity take
place? If the interpretation offered for these
studies is correct, then it would suggest that
the occurrence may not be infrequent nor
restricted to overlearned motoric behavior like
typewriting. Instead, if complex verbal interactions can be overlearned, mindlessness may
indeed be the most common mode of social
interaction. While such mindlessness may at
times be troublesome, this degree of selective
attention, of tuning the external world out,
may be an achievement (cf. Langer, 1978)
and perhaps should be studied as such. At
least it would seem that both the advantages
and disadvantages should be investigated, as
the boundaries of the phenomenon are delimited. At present, however, we may be in
the uncomfortable position of ovcrgencralizing
our laboratory findings for reasons not yet
mentioned by laboratory-research critics.
Once an individual is brought into the laboratory he or she is likely to be self-conscious.
642
E. LANGER, A. BLANK, AND B. CHANOWITZ
This self-consciousness may be thought provoking and habit inhibiting. Thus, we may
be left with the situation where we are studying the responses of thinking subjects and
then generalizing to successfully nonthinking
people.
Author's nole. Since the Langer and Abclson (1972)
paper was published, there have been diverging uses
of the terra script which did not become apparent
until after this manuscript was prepared. The clarification of the present distinction lies in the degree
of active information processing implied by the
word script. Abelson's use of the term script seems
to allow a range of cognitive activity. In our
formulation, the use of script signifies only relative
cognitive inactivity. To avoid confusion, the word
script as it appears in this article should be read as
"mindlessncss."
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Received January 25, 1978 •